Not that I like robot violence, but it is robot news……..
Merry Christmas from the International Space Station!
From: IEEE Spectrum
POSTED BY: Erico Guizzo / Fri, November 16, 2012
In this edition of Video Friday, we bring you humans controlling robots, humans interacting with robots, humans building robots, and humans tearing robots apart!
Many research groups are developing brain-machine interfaces capable of controlling advanced prosthetics such as bionic arms and hands. But how about using your thoughts to control a full humanoid robot? That’s what French and Japanese researchers demonstrated recently. A team from the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory showed how a person, wearing a cap with electrodes, could control a HRP-2 humanoid and make it perform tasks such as grasping objects. Though the range of tasks the robot can perform appears limited—and controlling a robot this way might require significant mental effort—it’s nonetheless an impressive demonstration of how the lines between humans and machines are blurring.
Automaton readers probably remember the fascinating (and totally weird) jamming gripper originally invented by a group from Cornell University, University of Chicago, and iRobot. It consisted of a balloon filled with a granular material like ground coffee; by applying vacuum to the balloon, researchers could make it harden and conform to the shape of objects, in effect working as a robotic gripper. Researchers have used the jamming approach to build elephant trunk-like manipulators, dart-shooting robot arms, and even creepy crawling hexapods. Now iRobot is finding some more useful applications for the balloon robot hand, such as opening doors.
Check out this little guy, a small Japanese humanoid called Robi. I know, we want one too! But apparently it’s not for sale. You have to build your own, using parts that come with issues of a weekly Japanese hobbyist magazine you have to subscribe to. According to Gizmag, it will take 70 issues (at a cost of $25 apiece) to get all the parts. The fully-assembled Robi is about 30 centimeters (12 inches) tall and weighs 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds). It’s a creation of famous Japanese robot designer Tomotaka Takahashi of ROBO GARAGE, known for developing the Evolta humanoid robot for Panasonic. I hope more robots like Robi could be mass produced and sold for reasonable prices. Robot makers, what are you waiting for?
I don’t know much about Aisoy Robotics. All I know is they’re a Spanish start-up and have built a little robot that loves to talk. They’re offering it as a platform for AI research. The video below shows how to program the robot to understand speech, detect touch, and respond accordingly. It’s all done through a browser-based visual interface. Like other modular robots such as the TurtleBot and Qbo, the Aisoy bot runs ROS and users can install “apps” to give the robot new capabilities. Developing easy-to-use, effective user interfaces is one of the biggest challenges for consumer robotics. Aisoy has a nice voice recognition and synthesis engine, so we’ll keep our eyes on them.
What’s almost as cool as building robots? Tearing robots apart to see how they work, of course! The evil geek geniuses at Adafruit Industries got one of the new Furbies and took it apart “as much as possible while still keeping it (semi) functional.” Poor robot owl. Or is it a hamster? Check out the vid below to see the result. And if you want to do the same to your Furby (don’t!), check out their step-by-step “epidermectomy” tutorial.
From: Jameco
How Servo Motors Work
This little motor-that-could is high in efficiency and power
By Frances Reed – Jameco Content Manager
Servo motors have been around for a long time and are utilized in many applications. They are small in size but pack a big punch and are very energy-efficient. Because of these features, they can be used to operate remote-controlled or radio-controlled toy cars, robots and airplanes. Servo motors are also used in industrial applications, robotics, in-line manufacturing, pharmaceutics and food services. But how do the little guys work?
The servo circuitry is built right inside the motor unit and has a positionable shaft, which usually is fitted with a gear (as shown below). The motor is controlled with an electric signal which determines the amount of movement of the shaft.
What’s inside the servo?
To fully understand how the servo works, you need to take a look under the hood. Inside there is a pretty simple set-up: a small DC motor, potentiometer, and a control circuit. The motor is attached by gears to the control wheel. As the motor rotates, the potentiometer’s resistance changes, so the control circuit can precisely regulate how much movement there is and in which direction.
When the shaft of the motor is at the desired position, power supplied to the motor is stopped. If not, the motor is turned in the appropriate direction. The desired position is sent via electrical pulses through the signal wire. The motor’s speed is proportional to the difference between its actual position and desired position. So if the motor is near the desired position, it will turn slowly, otherwise it will turn fast. This is called proportional control. This means the motor will only run as hard as necessary to accomplish the task at hand, a very efficient little guy.
How is the servo controlled?
Servos are controlled by sending an electrical pulse of variable width, or pulse width modulation (PWM), through the control wire. There is a minimum pulse, a maximum pulse, and a repetition rate. A servo motor can usually only turn 90 degrees in either direction for a total of 180 degree movement. The motor’s neutral position is defined as the position where the servo has the same amount of potential rotation in the both the clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. The PWM sent to the motor determines position of the shaft, and based on the duration of the pulse sent via the control wire; the rotor will turn to the desired position. The servo motor expects to see a pulse every 20 milliseconds (ms) and the length of the pulse will determine how far the motor turns. For example, a 1.5ms pulse will make the motor turn to the 90-degree position. Shorter than 1.5ms moves it to 0 degrees, and any longer than 1.5ms will turn the servo to 180 degrees, as diagramed below:
When these servos are commanded to move, they will move to the position and hold that position. If an external force pushes against the servo while the servo is holding a position, the servo will resist from moving out of that position. The maximum amount of force the servo can exert is called the torque rating of the servo. Servos will not hold their position forever though; the position pulse must be repeated to instruct the servo to stay in position.
Types of Servo Motors
There are two types of servo motors – AC and DC. AC servo can handle higher current surges and tend to be used in industrial machinery. DC servos are not designed for high current surges and are usually better suited for smaller applications. Generally speaking, DC motors are less expensive than their AC counterparts. These are also servo motors that have been built specifically for continuous rotation, making it an easy way to get your robot moving. They feature two ball bearings on the output shaft for reduced friction and easy access to the rest-point adjustment potentiometer.
Servo Motor Applications
Servos are used in radio-controlled airplanes to position control surfaces like elevators, rudders, walking a robot, or operating grippers. Servo motors are small, have built-in control circuitry and have good power for their size.
In food services and pharmaceuticals, the tools are designed to be used in harsher environments, where the potential for corrosion is high due to being washed at high pressures and temperatures repeatedly to maintain strict hygiene standards. Servos are also used in in-line manufacturing, where high repetition yet precise work is necessary.
Of course, you don’t have to know how a servo works to use one, but as with most electronics, the more you understand, the more doors open for expanded projects and projects’ capabilities. Whether you’re a hobbyist building robots, an engineer designing industrial systems, or just constantly curious, where will servo motors take you?
Resources:
Seattle Robotics Society
AI Shack Blog
Wikipedia
Jameco Workshop
From: NBCNews Gadget Box
A new toy company is using Kickstarter to help fund a set of intelligent building blocks called Atoms Express Toys. They fit together like LEGO blocks, but also work as sensors, motors and wireless connectors, allowing a child to build a remote control car in a matter of minutes.
Seamless Toy Company is making Atoms, which is the brainchild of CEO and founder Michael Rosenblatt, a former MIT Media Lab member who worked at Apple. On Wednesday, Atoms Express Toys hit their $100,000 goal on Kickstarter. NBC News talked with Rosenblatt about his new endeavor.
This area of the toy world is largely dominated by LEGO’s Mindstorms sets and a couple other smart-blocks products. Rosenblatt says that while what’s out there is very cool and capable, it’s both expensive and not really conducive to plain old play.
“There’s a lot of steps when you get it out of the box — you have to install software, download stuff. It’s hard for kids to pick up and run with,” Rosenblatt said. “Our immediate plan for the kits was to give kids something to do right out of the box.”
Indeed, the process of creating something like a robot with wheels and headlights, controlled by a tilt-sensitive remote, is accomplished in minutes rather than hours. Construction acts as a tutorial as well: Plug the wires in differently and you’ll reverse the way something spins, or make a lamp that turns on in the dark rather than the light.
That’s an important part of the process, Rosenblatt said. Creation and experimentation are critical to making future scientists and engineers, which is why he decided to make Atoms in the first place. And he’s not the only one who thinks so.
Mitchel Resnick, a former colleague of Rosenblatt’s at MIT and creator of Scratch, a programming environment for kids, agrees that “the most important thing that’s needed is more opportunities for young people to design, create, and experiment,” he told NBC News.
“We need people to grow up as creative thinkers. We should be developing high-tech toys that embody that same creative spirit of building blocks and modeling clay.”
Instead, high-tech toys try to deliver entertainment, he said. And that doesn’t just mean video games: “The key issue is not whether it’s on or off the screen, it’s whether the kids are in control of the experience.” He cited “Minecraft” and his own Scratch project as toys or games that provided tools for creation rather than just a single experience.
Of course, kids want to be entertained as well. To that end, the first Atoms kits include pieces that form basic projects like a rolling monster or remote-control propeller, but modules can be combined with LEGO and other decorative pieces to extend their versatility. Every piece has Velcro for easy attachment, and little loops so they can be sewn onto clothing or stuffed animals. There’s software available for iOS devices, and Android support is on the way.
Altogether there are 13 modules, from battery and Bluetooth blocks to motors and lights. The company focused on kid-friendly modules for the launch, but more advanced ones are on the way after the product gets out the door, likely in spring 2013.
Proximity and RFID sensors, stronger motors, fans, even a camera attachment are in the works. Building a robot you can log into from your iPad and roll around the house with could be done with a handful of blocks.
Rosenblatt says that projects like this last one, which could be enjoyed both by kids and their parents, are critical to making Atoms and Seamless Toy a success.
“There are people out there who think that starting a toy company in 2012 is like starting a record shop,” he said. And indeed, from the proliferation of tablets and video games, it might seem that toys are a dwindling market. And it’s true that the toy industry is shrinking — but it’s also changing.
“That’s why it needs to be multi-generational,” Rosenblatt said. In other words, it’s important that this “toy” can be made into either a spinning magic wand… or a keyless ignition system for a car. The devices are simple and open enough that such things are possible, although naturally making a remote control door lock or email-activated cat feeder takes a bit more work.
But it’s a toy first and foremost, and the team looks to children for inspiration.
“It’s neat to see what they want to do,” said Rosenblatt, “Because they’re not thinking in terms of proximity sensors — they’re saying ‘I want this to activate when the cat walks by.’ ”
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
Had to post this……Trapped in the Machine was a short film made for The 48 Hour Film Project. Why am I posting it, because all but one scene was filmed at the MidSouth Maker Space and I want to support the Makers and the creators of the film: Allotrope-Media.
It also does have a robot theme!
My friends at MidSouth Makers just pointed out this link http://www.themagpi.com/ A FREE, on-line magazine for Raspberry Pi users.
On other Raspberry Pi notes (also from my MSM friends) try http://store.raspberrypi.com/.
From IEEE Spectrum
POSTED BY: Angelica Lim / Mon, December 10, 2012
We’ve seen bio-inspired hummingbird robots, turtle robots, squirrel robots and more… enough to start an extremely profitable robot zoo. But very few researchers have been able to mimic the human body down to muscles and bones.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo are taking bio-inspired robots to new heights with Kenshiro, their new human-like musculoskeletal robot revealed at the Humanoids conference this month. They have added more muscles and more motors to their Kojiro robot from 2010, making Kenshiro’s underlying structure the closest to a human’s form so far. See the new body in the picture above.
Kenshiro mimics the body of the average Japanese 12-year-old male, standing at 158 centimeters tall and weighing 50 kilograms. Kenshiro’s body mirrors almost all the major muscles in a human, with 160 pulley-like “muscles”—50 in the legs, 76 in the trunk, 12 in the shoulder, and 22 in the neck. It has the most muscles of any other bio-inspired humanoid out there.
Check out the video: a headless and armless Kenshiro does squats, looking uncanny enough to give you the shivers.
Who are you calling fat?
Why try and mimic the human body? It turns out that getting a robot’s weight right is a tricky problem. Yuto Nakanishi, the head of the project, spoke about the weight problems of Kenzoh, Kenshiro’s tendon-driven upper-body robot ancestor. Kenzoh was a hearty 45 kg, just for the upper body. Scaling up, they projected that a full-body Kenzoh could weigh as much as 100kg!
That was a lot of weight for a relatively small robot. So they decided to design a robot with the same weight ratios of a human. For example, a 55 kg boy would have about a 5 kg thigh and 2.5 kg calf. Kenshiro copies that ratio, with a 4 kg thigh and 2.76 kg calf. Balance is key.
Weight was one thing, but the researchers also tried to mimic the muscle torque and joint speeds. Kenshiro’s total power output is 5 times greater than Kojiro’s, allowing it to do things like the gymnastics-like leg lift in the video above. Kenshiro can get almost the same amount of joint torque as a human, with joint angular speed not quite at human level, at 70-100 degrees per second. It’s a trade-off in weight and power: bigger and stronger motors are often heavier.
Muscles and bones
Like Kojiro, Kenshiro is actuated by a system of pulley-like muscles. This time, instead of single point-to-point muscles, they decided to make planar muscles — just check out Kenshiro’s abs to understand what we mean.
These flat and wide muscles use only one motor and are much more stable. All in all, these motors give Kenshiro 64 degrees of freedom (except for the hands): 13 in the neck, 13 in each arm, 7 in each leg, and 11 in the spine.
Kenshiro’s bone structure is also quite the sight. Its aluminum bones, including an impressive rib cage, are sturdier than previous 3D printed bones (breakage tended to be a problem), and its knee-joints include imitations of cruciate ligaments and a floating patella.
Nakanishi is also focusing his energies on a robotics start-up called SCHAFT Inc. to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. At Humanoids, he gave us a sneak-peek as to how their submission (not Kenshiro) is shaping up. Here’s a short bonus video for our readers:
